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... For in any one science the reduction of the total of
knowledge into its separate propositions does not shatter its
unity, chipping it into unrelated fragments; in each distinct
item is talent the entire body of the science, an integral thing
in its highest Principle and its last detail: and similarly a man
must so discipline himself that the first Principles of his Being
are also his completions, are totals, that all be pointed towards
the loftiest phase of the Nature: when a man has become this
unity in the best, he is in that other realm; for it is by this
highest within himself, made his own, that he holds to the
Supreme.
At no point did the All-Soul come into Being: it never arrived,
for it never knew place; what happens is that body, neighbouring
with it, participates in it: hence Plato does not place Soul in
body but body in Soul. The others, the secondary Souls, have a
point of departure- they come from the All-Soul- and they have a
Place into which to descend and in which to change to and fro, a
place, therefore, from which to ascend: but this All-Soul is for
ever Above, resting in that Being in which it holds its existence
as Soul and followed, as next, by the Universe or, at least, by
all beneath the sun.
The partial Soul is illuminated by moving towards the Soul above
it; for on that path it meets Authentic Existence. Movement
towards the lower is towards non-Being: and this is the step it
takes when it is set on self; for by willing towards itself it
produces its lower, an image of itself- a non-Being- and so is
wandering, as it were, into the void, stripping itself of its own
determined form. And this image, this undetermined thing, is
blank darkness, for it is utterly without reason, untouched by
the Intellectual-Principle, far removed from Authentic Being.
As long as it remains at the mid-stage it is in its own peculiar
region; but when, by a sort of inferior orientation, it looks
downward, it shapes that lower image and flings itself joyfully
thither.
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